SPEECH BY MR TAN KIAT HOW, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION & MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE THINK HEALTH SEMINAR SERIES 2025 BY ITE AND NHG HEALTH

A very good morning everyone,

 Prof Chua Hong Choon, President, NHG College and CEO, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) and Yishun Community Hospital (YCH)

 Ms Alice Seow, Principal, Institute of Technical Education (ITE) College West

 Ladies and gentlemen

 Students,

1.             Wonderful to be here today at the Think Health Seminar 2025 on "Empowering Youths, Transforming Health". It is a very important topic. So to all our students here today, I hope today’s seminar gives you a peek into the world of healthcare and inspires you to consider a career in this sector.

2.             Let me start by giving all of you a scenario. All of you, could have been recently or some time ago, probably have accompanied a family member or loved one, or maybe perhaps yourself, to see a doctor in hospital. And when you go to a hospital or any healthcare setting, I am sure you have interacted with many other healthcare professionals besides the doctors and nurses. And that is really the nature of healthcare – it is a team effort. For example, you might have met someone like Belinda, a Patient Service Associate at the front desk who helped you with your registration, guided you around clinic rooms, and advised you on payment options. Or a health coach who provided personalised nutrition, exercise, and other lifestyle advice.

3.             So there are many, many roles that individuals play as part of delivering healthcare, not just clinical ones. As pointed out by Professor Chua and Principal Seow earlier, we are all getting to be an older society. Ageing – some of us feel it more than others. When you are young, you probably do not feel so much, but you see your parents, perhaps your grandparents, loved ones, getting older. And by next year, Singapore will be a super-aged society, which means more than one in five Singaporeans are aged 65 years and above. And demand for healthcare services will continue to rise. So that is why we are investing a lot of resources into programmes like Age Well SG, as well as Healthier SG.

Nurturing the next generation of healthcare professionals

4.             And today’s Think Health Seminar is timely. It was started in 2023, and it is a demonstration of how the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) facilitates bringing together healthcare clusters, fitness practitioners, and social care professionals, and creating the very networks and partnerships that will define tomorrow's integrated healthcare landscape.

5.             And since its establishment in 1992, ITE has been a strong advocate and champion in nurturing the next generation of healthcare professionals. Through programmes like the Work-Study Diploma in Patient Management and Services and ITE’s innovative Health Coaching curriculum, ITE is equipping our new generation to take on new roles and contribute at the forefront of healthcare transformation. And many of these roles did not even exist a couple of decades ago. And many of them have become very important roles for young Singaporeans like all of you to take on meaningful careers and meaningful opportunities in healthcare.

6.             All of you, healthcare professionals, in clinical and non-clinical settings, have a very direct impact on the community and the health of patients and families. It is meaningful, purposeful. It gives many of those in healthcare sector a sense of job satisfaction. And I speak to many of our colleagues in the healthcare sector, from doctors, clinicians, to frontline colleagues – it gives them a sense of purpose. It is a meaningful career. But at the same time, beyond making sure there is a direct impact and meaningful career, the Ministry of Health wants to make sure that these careers are good, well remunerated, and have exciting prospects for anyone who joins this sector. So there is job security, structured career progression pathways and opportunities to grow in your roles, to take on new responsibilities, including supervisory roles. And these are the commitments that we will make to all healthcare professionals.

7.             As I said, many of these roles are evolving. Some of the roles that we talked about today never even existed a few years ago. So let me take a step for those of you here, young students in the audience. Let me paint you a picture of what it could look like when you graduate and enter the healthcare sector. For example, you could be a Health Coach, working in the community to provide personalised support to seniors to adopt healthier lifestyles and better manage their chronic conditions. You could be a Care Coordinator, bridging healthcare and social services, ensuring that our patients and their families receive timely, holistic support. Or you could be a Patient Service Associate like Belinda, guiding patients and caregivers at the frontlines, enabled and augmented by Artificial Intelligence (AI), for example, the chatbot that Professor Chua shared earlier.

8.             Besides ensuring these careers are challenging and exciting, we want to ensure that our healthcare workers are fairly and competitively remunerated for their contributions through regular salary enhancements. We just implemented the latest round in July this year. About 37,000 allied health professionals (AHPs), pharmacists, administrative, ancillary and support (AAS) staff in our public healthcare institutions received increases of up to 7% of their monthly base salaries. And these are just part of our efforts to recognise the contributions and dedication of healthcare workers to their professions. So to all those who are thinking of  joining this sector, you play an important role supporting a healthier Singapore, supporting our families and caregivers, and making a real difference to people’s lives, It is rewarding, but at the same time, we want to make sure that your careers are rewarded also, in terms of good prospects, good working environments, and good progression.

MOU between ITE and NHG Health

9.             And today shows a strength of our system. We are witnessing the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ITE and NHG Health. This is a type of collaboration between the school and our hospital clusters that we are very proud of. The five-year collaboration will create more meaningful pathways for ITE students to build meaningful careers in health, through internships and Work-Study Diploma placements. And NHG Health frontline staff will have access to these opportunities for professional development in areas, for example, in digital literacy and AI at ITE, and to collaborate with ITE students on digital health transformation projects. And our students, working together with our existing professionals, will bring fresh perspectives. And as digital natives, I think many of you are more established than us in digital technology. And our healthcare professionals will bring their deep experience and understanding of the problem statements. So it is a win-win collaboration. And we are creating a rich space for our students and healthcare professionals to interact, ideate, and collaborate on innovative, tech-enabled care transformation projects in the real-world, grounded by real-world problems.

10.          And with the rising rates of chronic diseases and patients’ care needs becoming more complex, care delivery will need to be done over multiple consultations, and involve the expertise of more than one healthcare professional. Working together in multidisciplinary teams will not only help us deliver more holistic and integrated care to patients, it also presents good opportunities for professional growth, whether vertically, by deepening your expertise in your field, or horizontally, through learning and working collaboratively with colleagues across different disciplines.  

Care and Workforce Transformation

11.          To our healthcare and social sector leaders here today, I call upon you too, to consider how you can contribute to care and our workforce transformation, especially as our population changes and demand for healthcare services and manpower needs rise.

12.          For example, consider this. Patient Services Associates can take on broader responsibilities beyond administrative tasks, such as essential basic clinical tasks. I am glad to know that NHG Health is also collaborating with ITE to facilitate this.

13.          As for health coaching, there are varied job titles across institutions – Health Coaches, Population Health Coordinators, Care Coaches, Community Engagement Associates – these are all job titles, but it reflects the evolving nature of this profession. I encourage you to take part in more cross-sector, multi-disciplinary collaborations, to create more opportunities and structured development for such roles, non-clinical and clinical roles alike.

14.          Let me just touch on a more important, and I think, exciting trend that is going to confront all of us in healthcare, actually across all economic sectors as well. It is about future technologies and AI, something that I think most of us would not have used or heard about, just a few years ago. The launch of ChatGPT, DeepSeek and different flavours of AI, I feel many of our students and professionals and workers here, you will use that in your daily job, if not just to plan your holidays or plan your tasks. But AI is a trend that is here to stay. So how should we think about using AI in health? Well, while we promote the use of technology like AI for workforce transformation, I think at the heart of healthcare, it is about the human touch. No technology can substitute the warmth of a Health Coach encouraging a patient to adhere to their lifestyle changes, or the support a Patient Service Associate provides to an anxious family member while visiting a loved one at a hospital. So technology that we adopt should not and cannot replace our healthcare professionals, but instead, enhance their ability to deliver better care for patients.

15.          Take generative AI for example – we are using it thoughtfully in healthcare to minimise administrative work. After every patient consultation, doctors must record what happened – symptoms, diagnoses, prescriptions, interventions. And these notes are essential for continuity of care, but they are time-consuming and often take the doctor’s attention away from what is most important – the patient. To address this, our doctors use ambient scribing tools which transcribe and summarise doctor-patient conversations across our four local languages, generating a first draft of the clinical notes. The doctor then reviews and finalises the notes for records. These tools are also being used by other healthcare professionals, such as our medical social workers. And just a simple use of this tool, using generative AI, has saved many hours of work and reduced the mental fatigue for our healthcare professionals. So we should use tools like AI effectively to benefit our healthcare professionals, make it easier for them to do their work, but it does not replace our healthcare professionals, instead helping them focus on what matters – connecting with patients, honing their skills, and delivering person-centred care.

16.          And our healthtech agency, Synapxe, is going to launch an AI-enabled conversational assistant within the HealthHub website and app later this year to enhance how residents access evidence-based health and wellness information and receive personalised recommendations. AI assistants like these can potentially support our health coaches’ work by answering straightforward healthcare-related and administrative questions, while enhancing our residents’ health literacy. These technologies will help to transform how care is provided to residents, help address basic, straightforward questions that is related to healthcare and administrative matters, to free up time for healthcare workers to better engage more deeply in their healthcare profession. So, these are things we are doing.

Guidelines to support safe AI adoption

17.          At the same time, we are very mindful that AI, despite its vast potential, carries risks. While AI can transform the way we deliver care, it also raises important questions about safety, deskilling, accountability and trust. As AI becomes an integral part of how we work, MOH continues to develop guidelines to support users in harnessing AI’s potential in the healthcare sector.

18.          That is why we are updating our AI in Healthcare Guidelines – which would be AIHGle 2.0, in consultation with Synapxe and our public healthcare institutions. It was first introduced in 2021. These guidelines help developers and healthcare teams adopt and use AI safely and responsibly.

19.          As challenges emerge from AI’s evolving capabilities, we are strengthening our safeguards to ensure that AI continues to serve patients and healthcare professionals. The revised guidelines will build on this foundation by providing comprehensive, practical guidance for the safe and effective use of AI across our healthcare ecosystem. It will help to reinforce accountability across our stakeholder groups – developers, deployers and healthcare professionals – throughout the entire AI lifecycle, with greater emphasis on transparency at every stage, from development all the way to the point of care to patients. With these safeguards in place to ensure responsible AI innovation, we can enhance care delivery and improve patient outcomes.

20.          As a next step, we will be organising further consultations with key stakeholders, including healthcare professionals, associations and technology developers. Your feedback will be valuable in ensuring that the updated guidelines remain relevant and practical. We all are the future of the healthcare sector in coming years.

Conclusion

21.          So let me conclude, by returning to the theme today of empowering youths and transforming healthcare.

22.          Through today’s seminar and the sharing of healthcare challenges and opportunities from our speakers, I hope you will be inspired to make a difference in healthcare, by joining the sector, or supporting peers who need help with their health, or bringing fresh perspectives to how we deliver care. All of us have a part to play. We are all friends, we are all family members to loved ones and people that we care about. By doing our part to supporting a better, healthier and more active lifestyle in Singapore, we make a real difference. And by joining the healthcare sector, you will make a direct, tangible, concrete difference to many Singaporeans in the community. And there are exciting jobs, exciting careers, exciting roles, that are well supported by various professional development opportunities, good renumeration, and importantly, you are working together with people who are dedicated, passionate, and like-minded, like all of you.

23.          I wish you all the best for exams, and hope you enjoy what the speakers share. Thank you.